Like Life

In Like Life’s eight exquisite stories, Lorrie Moore’s characters stumble through their daily existence. These men and women, unsettled and adrift and often frightened, can’t quite understand how they arrived at their present situations. Harry has been reworking a play for years in his apartment near Times Square in New York. Jane is biding her time at a cheese shop in a Midwest mall. Dennis, unhappily divorced, buries himself in self-help books about healthful food and healthy relationships. One prefers to speak on the phone rather than face his friends, another lets the answering machine do all the talking. But whether rejected, afraid to commit, bored, disillusioned or just misunderstood, even the most hard-bitten are not without some abiding trust in love.

An innovative portrait of a small Colorado town based on a decade’s worth of food-centered life histories from nineteen of its female residents. Located in the southern San Luis Valley of Colorado, the remote and relatively unknown town of Antonito is home to an overwhelmingly Hispanic population struggling not only to exist in an economically depressed and politically marginalized area, but also to preserve their culture and their lifeways. Between 1996 and 2006, anthropologist Carole Counihan collected food-centered life histories from nineteen Mexicanas―Hispanic American women―who had long-standing roots in the Upper Rio Grande region. The interviews in this groundbreaking study focused on southern Colorado Hispanic foodways―beliefs and behaviors surrounding food production, distribution, preparation, and consumption. In this book, Counihan features extensive excerpts from these interviews to give voice to the women of Antonito and highlight their perspectives. Three lines of inquiry are framed: feminist ethnography, Latino cultural citizenship, and Chicano environmentalism. Counihan documents how Antonito’s Mexicanas establish a sense of place and belonging through their knowledge of land and water and use this knowledge to sustain their families and communities. Women play an important role by gardening, canning, and drying vegetables; earning money to buy food; cooking; and feeding family, friends, and neighbors on ordinary and festive occasions. They use food to solder or break relationships and to express contrasting feelings of harmony and generosity, or enmity and envy. The interviews in this book reveal that these Mexicanas are resourceful providers whose food work contributes to cultural survival. “An important contribution to Mexican American culture.” ―Oral History Review “Counihan’s book is well written and will appeal to a wide spectrum of readers . . . I would recommend this book to those whose interests lie in foodways, gender studies, ethnography and folklore. A Tortilla is Like Life would be a good addition to any reading list, and a beneficial resource for those who desire to understand the complex associations of gender, food, culture and ethnicity.” —Digest: A Journal of Foodways and Culture

"There is pure gold here for those who want to understand the rules of the old ways. ... [The book] has a convincing sureness, an intensity which cannot be denied, a strong sense of family. ... Candidly, and often with sly humour, the three women discuss early white-Indian relations, the Klondike gold rush, the epidemics, the starvation, the healthy and wealthy times, and building of the Alaska Highway. ... Integrity is here, and wisdom. There is no doubting the authenticity of the voices. As women, they had power and they used it wisely, and through their words and Cruikshank's skills, you will change your mind if you think the anthropological approach to oral history can only be dull."--Barry Broadfoot, Toronto Globe and Mail.

Moreover, the evidence from sound symbolism's grammatical patterning, its performative foregrounding in multiple contexts of use, and its ability to trigger memories of key life experiences, suggests that for the Pastaza Quechua sound symbolism is more than a style of speaking. It is a style of thinking about oneself as connected, by the sounds that resonate through one's body, with the natural world.

The Native Americans have lived in the United States even before the colonists arrived. They had to share their land and resources with outsiders for the first time. When the Westward movement took place, more land was taken from Native Americans. This book will discuss how the Native Americans reacted to even more change. At the end of this book, ask yourself what you would have done if you were a Native American during those times.

Debbie Macomber is an international bestseller whose fans the world over have fallen in love with her inspirational and heartwarming love stories. In this classic tale of faith and trust, a shy librarian marries a Montana rancher--sight unseen! A shy Louisiana librarian, Mary Warner fears she'll always be alone—so she answers a personals ad from a rancher in Montana. Never before has she done anything so reckless, casting the only life she knows aside to travel to a strange place and marry a man she's never met. But something about this man calls to her—and she knows this may be her very last chance at happiness. Tragedy made Travis Thompson the guardian of three orphaned children—and determination leads him to do whatever it takes to keep the kids out of foster homes. When he decides to take a long shot on a personals ad, the results are surprising, and before he knows it, he has agreed to marry a mysterious Southern woman sight unseen. It could be the mistake of a lifetime. But Mary Warner may be exactly what this broken family needs. And with a little faith, a little trust, and a lot of love, two lonely hearts might just discover the true meaning of miracles.

Life's Like That was born when I was having trouble getting clients at the Family Counseling Center. That is a fancy name that came from my family counseling career. I thought I needed to get some ads in the local newspaper. That led to my meeting Mr Rowe Ray, the managing editor of the San Marcos Daily Record. I simply wanted to explore possibilities but ended with an invitation to write a weekly column for the newspaper. I can honestly say I never broke my word on confidentiality; i.e., everything we talked about stayed in the Center, everything that is except the funny things. I was counseling with a game warden that told me about a lady who was losing a sheep a night to one old hungry coyote. Whenever the warden came out, she would start feeling sorry for the coyote and asked the warden not to shoot it. Finally she had five sheep left. She called the warden and once again told him she wasn't ready to have him hunt down the coyote. The warden looked at the little flock of sheep and said, "Mrs. Jones, whatever you say, but we've only got five more days anyway." As you read this book there will be tears and sunshine. The good news is you don't have to sit down and read it all at once. Life Really Is Like That.

“When I hold the pen in my hand” The eyes are the reader. The ears see the beauty The breath inhale both of that The lips are smiling like a new moon The mind is crazy It holds all-stars Hands start the dance When I hold the pen in my hand The Soul is a perfect rhythm With all of them The flower, stars, moon with sunlight All come on together In the photos, like a poem When I hold the pen in my hand. (SI)